Discover how to create realistic fabrics in the free 3D software, Blender! Filippo Veniero reveals his cloth-simulation techniques for more natural-looking arch-viz scenes

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Introduction

If you use 3D software to create interior arch-viz scenes, sooner or later you're going to need to create a curtain. And yes, you can model it step by step – but if you use a cloth simulator you'll get very realistic results and save a lot of time!

In this tutorial I'll show you how to create a cloth and material simulation, and set up a simple interior scene. First of all, if we have a curtain then we are going to need a window too! Again: we could model a window, but why model something if there's an add-on to do that already?

Step 1: Curtain setup

Open Blender, delete the default cube and add a plane; call it 'curtain' and set the shading to Smooth. Rotate the plane by 90 degrees along the X axis, apply rotation (Ctrl+A), scale to the size of 3 x 2 meters and move it 3 meters along the Z axis.

Jump to edit mode (tab) and subdivide twice (number of cuts = 10). Now your curtain has about 150,000 vertices – enough for a realistic cloth simulation. Select all the vertices now and unwrap (U > project from view); we'll use this information later.

In Object mode, add a plane and scale it 4 times (S > 4). Jump to edit mode again and subdivide once (number of cuts = 10).

Curtain setup

Step 2: Selecting the vertex to be pinned

Select the curtain, open object data panel and add two shape key (Blender will add a basis and a key1 shape). Now jump to edit mode and select the vertex that will be pinned as show in the image below. Add a new vertex group, call it pinned and click on assign button. Move the 3D cursor on the first pinned vertex on the left side and set pivot point as 3Dcursor. Scale along x axis ( S > X > 0.5) and click on apply shape keys in edit mode button (in shape key panel with key1 shape selected). Now, if you click and drag value slide you'll see that the pinned vertex moves along x axis.